482 VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE IN SCOTLAND. 
be weakness in the pulsation, and a general falling off in the 
animal. The disease is not a common one; the treatment he 
would prescribe in such a case, would be to give nutritious 
and strengthening food, and tonic medicines or stimulants. 
If dropsical swellings appeared he would apply the lancet. 
The weight of a natural heart varies from four to six pounds. 
The abscess, and the action of it, were quite sufficient to 
account for the cow’s death. In such a case there can be 
no direct treatment or immediate cure for the disease, and 
all that can be done is to strengthen the animal’s system. 
M. A. Cuming, Veterinary Surgeon, Ellon, Member of the 
Royal Veterinary College, London, got his diploma in 1846. 
Was present along with Skea at the dissection. He found the 
heart to be healthy as regards the muscular structure. To 
the pericardium there was attached, on its right side, a 
large cyst or abscess, which on being opened, was found to 
be full of pus, partly fluid and partly concrete. The walls 
of the cyst consisted of adventitious organised membrane, 
about half an inch in thickness, and containing but few 
blood-vessels. Judging from the quantity of matter in the 
cyst, the extent and thickness of its walls, its being situated 
exterior to the pericardium, and the necessarily slow growth 
of such collections, he is of opinion that the abscess must 
have been in progress for a long course of time,—for at least 
one or two years. The symptoms he would expect to find, 
where such an abscess was present, would be gradual loss of 
condition and decline of the general health, arising from the 
continued and increasing pressure of so much foreign matter 
upon the heart. This would produce secondary derange¬ 
ment both of the nervous and digestive systems, and ulti¬ 
mately, though gradually, a set of conditions incompatible 
with the continuance of life. He had no doubt but that the 
abscess was the cause of the cow’s death, and that it was in 
existence and of large size six months previous to that event. 
The disease is very uncommon, and he thinks could not be 
detected in a living cow, which was apparently healthy and 
eating her meat. The treatment he would recommend for 
an animal in whom he had seen the symptoms described, 
would be of a tonic and stimulating character. If dropsical 
swellings appeared he would puncture them. No treatment 
he thinks could have saved the life of that cow. 
It is customary to consider the note appended to the judg¬ 
ment of a civil law cause, as something of the same kind with 
the calm, deliberative statement of a judge summing up a 
case to a jury, pointing out the strong and weak parts of the 
evidence, and balancing the “ pros” and “ cons” as they seem 
